I’ve just published in the peer-reviewed literature explaining:
“Much of the present research effort by government institutions in Australia, which is focused on monthly and seasonal rainfall forecasts, is limited to the application of general circulation models, in particular, POAMA. However, results so far have been disappointing with medium-term monthly forecasts consistently about equivalent to, or worse than, climatology, Table 4. Nevertheless in June 2013, POAMA was adopted as the system for generating the BOM’s official seasonal forecasts.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809513003141
[Open access until March 26, 2014]
In short, the Bureau could better serve the Australian public by just updating and publishing the long-term average rainfall each month for localities for which it has statistics, rather than pretending it can generate a reliable forecast. And I offer the same advice to the UK Met Office which yet again botched its seasonal weather forecast. The following quotes via Benny Peiser at The Global Warming Policy Foundation.
BUNGLING weather bosses predicted a drier than usual winter, it has emerged. The Met Office’s staggeringly inaccurate forecast was made at the end of November last year – just a month before the record-breaking deluge began. And the agency gave just a one in seven chance the three following months would “fall into the wettest category”. On Nov 21, its experts predicted: “For the December-January-February period as a whole, there is a slight signal for below-average precipitation”. The calamitous estimate emerged as Downing Street dubbed the devastation caused by the floods as “Biblical”. –Tom Newton Dunn, Political Editor, The Sun, 11 February 2014 [Read more…] about General Circulation Models Can’t Forecast Seasonal Rainfall
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.